Here Dwell Together Still
by lalunaticscribe
Summary: The story of Shirley Holmes, Puella Magi, who just wanted to find a world to be happy


_**Here Dwell Together Still**_

_**An LLS Production**_

* * *

_Due to authorial disagreements and a report, I took down For a Miracle. In that vein, I didn't want readers to end up disappointed, so I cobbled together the true facts behind For a Miracle so that at least the ending won't go to waste._

* * *

_Here dwell together still two men of note,  
__Who never lived and so can never die.  
__How very near they seem yet how remote  
__That age before the world went all awry._

In another world, in another time, Joan Watson lay dying. Her military-camouflage outfit was shredded in places, and her magic fast dissipating. Beside her, two other girls lay on either side, both dark of hair as a contrast to Joan's own golden locks. One wore an opera gown; the other wore a fedora and a billowing trench-coat.

The Puella Magi in the opera gown, Irene, giggled. "Until the last... you're still... trying to laugh. Shirley... Jenny... that... would be nice."

"Do you have any Grief Seeds?" the other girl whimpered.

"No..." Joan sighed, barely any energy left to even talk.

"Jenny darling, unprepared?" Irene's laugh turned into a hacking cough.

"Joan," Shirley corrected, her body flat on the ground. "We're... dying. We're dying..."

"Shirley...?" Irene breathed, turning to stare open-mouthed at Shirley.

"S- Shirley...?" Joan Watson murmured.

"Joan," Shirley's tears dripped down next to them. "Irene... Irene... I'm so sorry. For everything. For dragging you into this... for pulling the two of you to fight the strongest witch with me... and for failing to deliver. I..."

"We saved everyone," Joan assured.

"Let me speak!" Shirley's grip tightened on Joan's hand. "Joan... I don't regret meeting you. I have never regretted meeting you. And I wish... I wish that no matter what, we could have had a future. Together."

"Me too," Joan answered, as the fingers that bound them tightened. "I wish... I wish that maybe, if you were born male, you wouldn't feel alone. I wish that maybe, we could have found each other before Kyubey. We could have lived together, been happy together... maybe even marry each other-"

"Absolute pants," Irene laughed, a mismatch to the tears dripping down her cheeks. "Both of you... oh, just say it already!"

"I've said all I wanted to," Shirley hissed, as if in pain.

"So have I," Joan affirmed. "Clever Shirley... Clever Irene... I just wish... that we had a world where we could be happy. I wish that we can find a world... without magic. It'll be primitive... it'll be tough... but at least, we'll know each other-"

"We don't even know if we'll have met without magic," Shirley whispered. "If I knew I met you, even if I knew the consequences, I still would've done it... I don't mind dying... if I knew, that for certain..."

Overhead, over their broken, soon-drowning corpses, the figure of the Walpurgisnacht created by the late James Moriarty, laughed its last, dying scream. Their strategy had worked, but at a high cost; now all three Puella Magi had fallen in battle.

Irene swiftly coughed, her Soul Gem shattering, and a Witch was born. Amidst the rubble that was swiftly gathering into the Witch's barrier, Joan Watson swiftly drew a black spindly object and reached towards Shirley Holmes.

"Joan... Joan!" Shirley hissed, her eyes dancing from the Grief Seed purifying a gem of the darkest sapphire towards a grimly determined Joan.

"I lied," Joan sobbed. "I've... only... got one."

"No!" Shirley insisted, gripping onto the hand as if to force it away. "Joan-"

"Live!" Joan Watson cried. "Live, Shirley Holmes, you mad girl, you. You can... you can find new worlds... right? So, you can find those worlds... those worlds where we lived together, happy together... so that, though the world explode, we'll survive. We'll meet again..."

"Promise me," Shirley begged. "That we'll find each other again. You might be a stolid, stocky male doctor named John Watson. I might be a tall, dark and handsome consulting detective who's absolute pants at taking care of myself. I'll be completely dependent on you and you'll feel all excited with me and it'll be terribly, horribly domestic and we'll love it. I could take on the world with you by my back and sides, with me, because... I'm not alone any more. I am never alone anymore. So promise me..."

"I promise," Joan nodded.

"We will...?" the sole living Puella Magi of the assault of Walpurgisnacht whispered.

"If magic exists... if miracles exist... definitely, somewhere, we'll meet again," Joan gave a broken smile as she reached for her own darkening Soul Gem. "That's why... you have to find a world the two of us can be happy together in. You can do that, Shirley?"

"I will," Shirley Holmes sniffed. "I promise. Joan... I promise."

Joan Watson smiled. "I'm glad."

And she crushed the Gem.

* * *

_But still the game's afoot for those with ears  
Attuned to catch the distant View-halloo:  
England is England yet, for all our fears  
Only those things the heart believes are true._

Finding a world without magic was harder than usual, but Shirley managed to waltz her way through the space-time continuum in sheer desperation.

The first Witch she killed herself, she took the Grief Seed and ran. There, she spotted them. A boy, speaking to all and sundry of the idiocy of the common man... and a blonde girl, giving him the very same look that Shirley once saw Joan look at her; admiration and appeal and all of that, with the same smile where Shirley once saw Joan use when Shirley asked – ordered – for tea. And the boy, Sherrinford, his name was, he didn't appreciate poor, sweet Jane.

The body of Sherrinford Holmes was left in the next Witch's labyrinth before the mysterious student Shirley Sigerson appeared in that school. Within the next week, Jane Watson was tagging behind Shirley Sigerson, and Shirley was happy and warm in Jane's attention.

Jane Watson died when the Witches came, of course.

Shirley left that world, and came to another. Killed the Holmes there and took their place, and took care of the Watson. Watched Watson pass on, usually peacefully or at war or at Shirley's cases; for the cases, the _cases_. Repeat the masquerade of Harlequin.

Once, Sheridan Holmes was a high-profile serial killer. Jack Hammond Watson was the only psychiatrist to accept him. Shirley was about to carry out her plan to spirit that Holmes away, when Holmes did a murder-suicide; the Puella Magi watched as Holmes and Watson expired in each other's arms.

There and then, the Holmes of that world – never _her world_, always _that world, this world_ – and mouthed the words: 'You will never take him from me.'

Shirley got wise after that. Started early; tracked down Watson, the Janes and the Joans and the Johns and, in one memorable case, the Hamish. Somehow the surnames were invariable; Hunters and Huxleys and Holmwoods and Hopes, with Woods and Woods' and Walters and Wallaces. Holmeses and Watsons, nearly always.

Shirley's magic was long tuned to the presence of Watson, Joan; somehow, it resonated with that of the Watson of that world, too. And the Holmes; if all failed, Shirley could track down the Holmes – _the_ Holmes, not _Shirley_ Holmes – and track them down. Then it was a matter of learning their mannerisms – never hard – faking their looks – again, not hard, nothing magic couldn't do with the literal transport of her Soul Gem – and then it was faking from the Mycrofts, because no matter the incarnation Mycroft Holmes might get wise and that would be bad.

Holmes and Watson met with every world and incarnation she visited; sometimes, it was but for a fleeting second, and sometimes it was when, on one memorable occasion, Sabrina Holmes fell for Jacques Watson on board a ship doomed to sink. Shirley, tired and exhausted Shirley, had mourned the death of Jacques, and so had the Holmes.

One memorable occasion, in one particular world, Shirley was ready to murder the Holmes of that world, a nineteenth century thing of swirling fogs and chintz chairs. The Watson was John H. Watson, nearly the closest thing to Joan, an arrestingly interesting Watson amongst a multitude of Watsons. She had come with the intent to take his place, but then the man awoke.

He looked unsurprised, even with the unremarkable masculine form in the room holding a knife to his throat. "I've been expecting you. To whom may I address the salutation?"

"Moriarty," Shirley gasped the first name that came to her mind before the gun came up and the Puella Magi beat a hasty retreat.

"Tell the Professor he really shouldn't attack me here," Sherlock Holmes called as she escaped.

It called for another method; she invented a case, she took a foreign woman's place, and then Mary Morstan took Doctor John Watson to the altar with Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective as best man. A week before Doctor John Watson left his new bride to see to the comfort of that Holmes before Holmes died.

The swift beheading of Professor James Moriarty that followed was scant comfort for the Puella Magi there and then. True, she was married to Watson, but Watson had seen Holmes die and clearly Sherlock Holmes deserved death for putting Watson through this even though Holmes was alive; this Shirley knew.

_Like you wouldn't do the same to protect Watson? _Her conscience mocked.

Mary Watson nee Morstan faked death by childbirth; it was heart-rending for John H. Watson, but it had been worth it to see Sherlock Holmes and John H. Watson retire to keep bees in Sussex. Shirley watched the two old men expire; Watson left first.

"It's you," even in his deathbed the memory of Sherlock Holmes was clear. "Moriarty's agent. Except you weren't."

"I'm not," Shirley confirmed.

"Why are you wearing that horrible deerstalker? You look stupid. And that outfit... it's what I wore in Dartmoor. The Baskerville case. Watson was scared... no, not Watson," Holmes paused. "John."

"My name is Shirley Holmes." It felt strange. "I am not of this world. Many years ago... I came to kill you and take your place. I wanted Watson, you see."

"Well, you aren't getting him," Holmes gave a broken laugh. "Two old men dying together... why are you, young and with your life before you, spending it away like this? I recognise your cadence, Mrs Watson. Or is it Morstan now?"

"Why did you come back?" Shirley cried. "I would have made him happy. Why did you have to be alive?! I am a Holmes; I am you, of another world. I would have made Watson happy were she alive today. How did you bear it?"

"My dear... Ms Holmes," Sherlock Holmes leaned back and breathed his last. "You assume that I bore it as an Englishman would have. I did not. But what you have said confirmed, beyond a doubt, that if other worlds exist, then so must an afterlife. I am so relieved... you see, I'll meet Watson again. My John."

Holmes and Watson existed, Watson blissfully unaware of Holmes's background. Holmes only disappeared when Watson had died. Watson did die; even Shirley Holmes, for all of the brilliance Joan Watson had lauded, had yet to figure out how her magic could extend each and every Watson's lifespan.

* * *

_A yellow fog swirls past the window-pane  
As night descends upon this fabled street:  
A lonely hansom splashes through the rain,  
The ghostly gas lamps fail at twenty feet._

The latest world required more preparation. This time, Mycroft Holmes was a Pueri Magi, and more paranoid of Sherlock's continued welfare. At least the Holmes hadn't been a Puer Magi as well; Shirley had enough trouble with one Holmes Magi. It was all she could do to find an actor and create the identity of James Moriarty; Moriarty would 'kill' Sherlock and himself, allowing Shirley to take that place and then get rid of the bodies. Maybe a nice demon swarm.

Doctor John Hamish Watson was a former Army doctor – and here Shirley had pieced together that nearly all of the Watsons had been with the military or medical sectors one way or another – and a Puer Magi. Good; if Shirley could convince this one to follow her, Holmes and Watson might hang around a lot longer yet.

Doctor John Hamish Watson was also the one who shot the Jezail bullet that erased her disguise.

"You're-" Sherlock Holmes stared as the magic had shattered and Shirley Holmes faced Sherlock Holmes for the first time. "You're me."

"I _will_ be," Shirley Holmes scrabbled for purchase against the tiles of the Pool floor – Carl Powers, odious boy, deserved it – and lunged for Sherlock. "John. Joan. Watson. My Watson. You won't take him from me, I won't let you, I'm going to be happy with Watson, my Watson. I'll killed a thousand eight hundred and ninety-four of you, of myself, it can't end like this!"

A hammer thumbed down, a cylinder rotated. A gunshot went off.

_Glass shattered._

_Here, though the world explode, these two survive,  
And it is always eighteen ninety-five._

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_**Please review!**_


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